The War On Women, By Women

I clicked a link and ended up at this wangdangled column titled “She the People” the other day. Ignore how horribly sexist and self-aggrandizing that title is, if you can, and drop your gaze to the column inches of hyperbolic self-victimization below. The piece’s author is upset because, apparently, Rick Santorum’s life consists of having an intact nuclear family and something about him not understanding this patriarchal society in which we live, a society that has legislated mediocrity in the name of equality at the demand of misguided women. It ironically dissolved into a war cry that the government doesn’t provide enough for women.

“We went from the right to vote to THIS?”

A few things.

She also mentions the still unratified Equal Rights Amendment, which was introduced in Congress by — irony of ironies — Republicans. In 1923.

In Santorum’s “Rockwellian” America, men stand by their devoted wives and delightful children. They all work hard, go to church on Sundays, do their homework. Then the parents launch their competent, well-educated kids into a world eager to employ them. Everything is copacetic in Sweater World.

This is parlayed as a mark against him. Apparently, Santorum would be more acceptable if he was a deadbeat whom pimped his daughter.

As cornball as Norman Rockwell’s illustrations were, their sentimental scenes would be a welcome break from the violence, uncertainty, poverty, rape and sexual abuse that besets the lives of many women and children.

And attempting to ridicule how one candidate has lived a nice family life and honored the woman to whom he’s married and raised well-adjusted children, including daughters, will be the positive reinforcement society needs to copy such a lifestyle. Wait … what?

Let these pro-life Republican men who are so concerned about innocent lives put their money where their mouths are. Let them beef up the welfare system by way of a special tax on the wealthy. Let’s put aside a mandatory trust fund that will pay for decent housing, schooling and food for 18 years of each new life created.

Yes! Let’s prove how empowered and independent women are by latching them onto the trust-fund teat of government welfare! Oh, I know, it’s not “welfare” per se if it’s an “entitlement.” Call it that if it makes you feel better and more glamorous than saying you’re on a version of “food stamps.”

But that’s not what the GOP has in mind. Republicans want to control the actions of women and girls, not provide for them.

Yes, princess, by asking that you provide for yourselves. When “feminists” are denied freebies it doesn’t mean that they’re “banned” from these things or controlled; it means that they have to stop going to Uncle Sam with their manicured hands stuck out for a publicly-funded allowance. Republicans want women to be self-sustaining because when you provide for yourself you are truly free. “Feminists” were angry about ultrasounds with Virginia law — but they were the ones out there protesting for Uncle Sam to have a greater say in their health care with Obamacare. They begged for mandates. All they saw was “FREE.” They missed the level of control written between the lines.

The biggest enemy to progressive feminists is progressive feminists. They support an administration that’s run up a trillion-dollar deficit every year since its inauguration, kicked up unemployment to 9%, continued to waste money with a puppet government in Afghanistan, we could be here awhile. The administration for which they campaigned has so badly impacted this economy, the very thing the women’s movement fought for, choice, is being rescinded as more and more women lose the choice whether to go to work or stay home with their children. The entitlement culture they promote is eroding away the actual liberty in “women’s liberation” as they trade “all expenses paid” for control.

My old southern Baptist granny, God rest her soul, used to tell her grandkids that the best form of birth control was to hold a piece of paper between your knees. While “feminists” are distracted with this nontroversy, everything for which my grandmother fought — and her mother before her (who was a legit Rosie the Riveter during the war) will be eclipsed by irony.